It’s all about the sorting.

Sometimes Ancestry.com seems to either try to help or just do things in a random way. This discussion is about how the entries in a census household are sorted on one of the results screens.

When I “mouse over” the “View Record” link on my current results page, more information from the record comes up.

That’s fine.

But apparently Ancestry.com seems to think these household names need to be sorted in order of age. That’s how they are shown for this entry for Ulfart Bherns in Adams County, Illinois’ 1880 federal census. I’ve seen it happen in other cases as well–it’s not just about the Behrens family.

Trientje, the 85-year old mother, is listed first. Ancestry.com apparently has the names keyed to their ordering on the actual census as that’s how they appear when I actually click on the “record” for Ulfart Bhrens. The members of the household are listed on that page in the order they are enumerated in the census.

Why don’t they show up that way on the mouseover? It doesn’t make any sense–I would prefer the names to be in the order they are in the census whenever they are displayed as a household. Seems like a random time to sort in a non-random fashion.

The sorting isn’t crucial to my research, but things like this just always make me wonder what else might be displayed in some way other than the original.

All the more reason to look at the original record itself–which is the last image on this post.